Hi all,
I’ve been looking at this again for some translations I’m working on. I noticed Bhante @Sujato added a footnote:
The denial of “mother and father” is usually interpreted as the denial of moral duty towards ones’ parents. However, I think it is a doctrine of conception which denies that a child is created by the mother and father. Rather, the child is produced by the four elements, with parents as mere instigators and incubators.
The commentary doesn’t really speak about duties, but about results of conduct towards one’s parents. Regardless, I think Ven. Sujato presents a better interpretation than the traditional one, because it fits the surrounding materialist doctrine much better. I am still not really convinced by it, however, primarily because it would imply the Buddha’s positive phrasing—that there are mother and father—meant that the child is truly created by the parents. This doesn’t really align with the Buddha’s doctrines on karma and so forth. It would almost be a confirmation of the caste system, which he of course didn’t support.
(In MN93, for example, although the term gandhabba is somewhat obscure, he says that one can’t say whether the child to be born of a Brahmin woman was a noble, or a brahmin, or a merchant, or a worker. The Chinese parallel takes this to refer to their past life.)
Unless I’m misunderstanding Bhante’s idea…
I’m still inclined to take the phrase to refer to the future, i.e., one’s mother and father won’t exist. Māgadhabhāsā p.91 says the present indicative (in this case atthi) can be used to indicate a certain or inevitable future. It seems the present tense is not infrequently used for statements about a post-mortem situation, as in na hoti paraṃ maraṇā, for example. AN4.173 specifically uses natthi in this context as well, with the same annihilistic sentiment, I would argue.
I further think that the mother and father, although the terms are in the singular, stand for one’s ancestors more generally. The denial of there being no mother and father can thus alternatively be understood as “there are no ancestors”. This fits the materialistic doctrine and society in general, where ancestor worship (such as the Pitrs of the Vedas) was a big thing.
I’m just wondering if anybody has any more thoughts on this, having given it some time since we last discussed this.